Wednesday, 25 June 2008

Some of you may be aware that over the last few days Ive been attending job interviews...suffice to say the pressure and stress that has come with these high pressure situations has led to me hitting the bottle..... :) :) :) well ok not quite...but chocolate liquer truffles seemed a fitting thing to review this evening...with that I bring you todays review - Baileys Original Irish Cream Truffles.

For those of you who are unaware Baileys Irish Cream is an Irish whiskey and cream based liqueur, made in Dublin, Ireland. The trademark is currently owned by Diageo and has a declared alcohol content of 17% alcohol by volume. These truffles were around 14.0g in weight each - I consumed four in one sitting which was more than enough due to their richness. For everyones knowledge I found these in Tesco in small packs of two....£1.50 each so worth noting they are quite pricey!

The truffles came foil wrapped and inside a pretty flimsy but nice looking cardboard box. I was pretty impressed with not only the packaging but also the asthetic look of the product which as you can see above looked pretty tempting....the truffle centre in particular looked particulalry whipped and appertising. Unwrapping each tuffle from their foil packaging each truffle had a slight alochol aroma...the cocoa scent was very subtle and if anything could of done with being more forthcoming.

My main gripe with these truffles came with the chocolate. Now dont get me wrong here the chocolate tasted great...it was a mixture of non-sweetened chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate..dont ask me how this was all mixed but the end result was an incredibly rich but creamy chocolate. What was also pleasant was that some of the whisky was present in the chocolate layer which added a nice edge....so what was wrong you ask?? Well it was the portioning of the chocolate...in some truffles the chocolate coating was very thick...in others it was very thin..the inconsistancy wasnt a major thing but it should really not be something that is overlooked.

The Baileys centre...well what can I say it tasted like Baileys :) creamy with an malty alcoholic whiskey kick....im not a massive fan generally of Baileys but I think it worked here - the creamyness of the centre worked extremely well with the richness of the chocolate in what was a nice development of flavour...the two components just seemed to seamlessly transition from rich cocoa to creamy liqueur..yum. The texture of the centre was also very pleasant..it wasnt quite as light as Lindt Lindor truffles but was equally as smooth...personally I would have preferred it to be a tad lighter...it was quite dense but I can also see how hard it would have been to achieve the same creamy taste.

Overall the sole determinant of whether this product is enoyed by the consumer lies litterally in the quite obvious factor of whether they enjoy Baileys or not...the chocolate though lacking in a consistant proportioning level is of a good quality and has a nice rich cocoa taste. This is no suprise looking at the ingredients which state that it is 35% solids chocolate with cocoa butter used to create a nice smooth texture...its good stuff. The obvious dominant flavour is the Baileys liqueur which I luckily enjoyed...its was as creamy as the drink and added a nice edgy different flavour to the truffle. As I have said above my recommendation on whether you should try this product lies solely in question of whether you enjoy Baileys or not..if you do go right ahead this is a great tasting truffle...for this reason it recieves a pretty high Chocolate Mission rating.